Although our meeting fell on Mardi Gras, our poems didn’t generate a carnival atmosphere. Indeed most of them led to earnest discussions, whether about body art, abuse of power, or the objectivity of truth itself. As a result, we went round the group only twice, so the number of poems read was unusually small.
We opened with Michael Donaghy’s darkly humorous ‘Liverpool’, giving rise to the question as to whether a person’s tattoos represent the truth about them, or maybe a disguise?
Sir Walter Raleigh’s ‘The lie’ forcibly calls out falsehood and corruption in a long list of institutions. It must have upset a lot of people. Contrast that with Emily Dickinson’s ‘Tell the truth but tell it slant’, which suggests a less direct approach – it imagines a truth too bright to look at directly. This led to us also hearing her ‘There’s a certain slant of light’.
William Blake’s ‘The poison tree’ advocates frankness and warns of the danger of repressing and dissimulating the truth.
The speaker in Susan Jarvis Bryant’s ‘A truthful triolet’ wants a known liar to redeem him/herself by sticking to the truth. The poem adheres to the classic triolet structure.
The dangers of mischievous lying were illustrated by hilarious Hilaire Belloc’s ‘Matilda, who told lies and was burned to death’.
Beneath the zany humour of WH Auden’s ‘Tell me the truth about love’ was a note of melancholy. The truth is, love can be hard to find.
A little sentimental verse in Hamlet’s letter to Ophelia (Shakespeare, Hamlet Act 2 Scene 2) is ironic in view of his later treatment of her.
The equally diminutive poem ‘Sacrifice’ by Ralph Waldo Emerson may have been inspired by Persian gnomic quatrains. It suggests we rarely are brave enough to fight for the truth. These remarks are longer than the poem.
In ‘The fisherman’, WB Yeats expresses his contempt for Irish cultural circles and imagines a simple man who would be the poet’s ideal reader.
John Keats’ ‘Ode on a Grecian urn’ made its inevitable appearance in this theme, given its famous closing motto equating truth and beauty – cue for much discussion. A poem full of strikingly expressed wonderful observations, and a fine example of ekphrasis.
A link between our opening poem ‘Liverpool’ and this closing one was noted – cyclic designs, whether tattooed around an arm or painted around a vase.
Two more we didn’t have time to read but which would also have likely given rise to debate: Rudyard Kipling’s ‘The legend of Truth’, in which Truth is overwhelmed by the true facts of war and enlists the support of Fiction; and Philip Larkin’s ‘An Arundel tomb’ with its ‘almost true’ conclusion – and virtuoso rhyme scheme.
David Aldred was inspired by the theme to write ‘An oath of fidelity‘.
Another one which would have fitted our theme – Wilfred Owen’s ‘Dulce et decorum est’.